Psychedelic drugs could tackle depression in a way that antidepressants canít

When Clark Martin tripped on magic mushrooms for the first time, he was flanked by two researchers in a small room at New York University.

An avid sailor, Martin said the first few hours of the experience reminded him of a time he'd been knocked off his boat by a powerful wave and lost track of the vessel.

"It was like falling off the boat in the open ocean, looking back, and the boat is gone. Then the water disappears. Then you disappear," he said.

But the panic was temporary. Over the next few hours, Martin felt overwhelmed by an enduring sense of tranquility and a feeling of oneness with his surroundings.

"The whole 'you' thing just kinda drops out into a more timeless, more formless presence," Martin told Business Insider in January.

That shrinking of the sense of self has been linked with long-lasting shifts in perspective - changes that appear to be related to a reduction in symptoms of depression and anxiety. That's according to clinical trials of magic mushrooms' active ingredient, psilocybin, in cancer patients at Johns Hopkins and New York University. Martin was one of those patients.

David Nutt, the director of the neuropsychopharmacology unit in the division of brain sciences at Imperial College London, told Business Insider in January that a key characteristic of mental illnesses like anxiety, depression, and addiction is overly strengthened connections in some brain circuits - specifically those involved in the sense of self.

"In the depressed brain, in the addicted brain, in the obsessed brain, it gets locked into a pattern of thinking or processing that's driven by the frontal, the control center," Nutt said.

Brain scan studies and several clinical trials suggest that psychedelic drugs tamp down on the activity in these circuits, potentially providing relief that may last a few weeks, several months, or even years. For this reason, preliminary research on psychedelics suggests they could one day be used to help treat mental illnesses.

"Psychedelics disrupt that process so people can escape," Nutt said. "At least for the duration of the trip, they can escape about the ruminations about depression or alcohol or obsessions. And then they do not necessarily go back."

Researchers say the drugs' apparent ability to induce powerful, positive changes in personality could offer a way to address the foundations of mental illness, unlike current antidepressant medications that simply treat the symptoms.

"Psychedelic therapy ... offers an opportunity to dig down and get to the heart of the problems that drive long-term mental illness in a much more effective way than our current model, which is take daily medications to mask symptoms," psychiatrist Ben Sessa said at a recent conference in London on the science of psychedelics.

The drugs are not a treatment in and of themselves, Sessa said. Rather, they are a tool that can be used in conjunction with therapy to help people address underlying issues.

"It's using the drugs to enhance that relationship between the therapist and the patient," he said.

Julie Holland, a psychiatrist who is currently serving as the medical monitor for a study of MDMA and psychotherapy in veterans with PTSD, said at the conference that she sees the use of psychedelics alongside therapy as a powerful way to address issues that patients may never deal with on existing anti-depressant medications.

Those medications, Holland said, "are sort of sweeping symptoms under the rug. Psychedelic psychotherapy takes the rug out back and beats the hell out of it and vacuums the floor and puts the rug back down."

Mrs. Mo had had the same Part D provider for 15 years. Back in March, they raised her premium by $30/month. That would not have been outside our means. However, we have never received a bill from them, EVER, in spite of two correspondences per month explaining the same benefits every month and telling us how great a choice they were for us; and we received no notice of increased premium. So we continued to send in the same premium we always had.

Then comes mid-June. We go to the pharmacy and find out that Mrs. Mo's Part D coverage has been dropped. After about 20 hours on the phone over the course of three days, we finally find out why. To make matters even better, we offer to pay the $120 that we were never told about in the first place, but they say it's too late for that now after cancellation, and she'll need to pick a new plan from somebody else.

So we sold several valuables to cover the $2000 for her scripts for that month. Thanks, SilverScript!

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maturin

I've always appreciated your restraint, Mo

Quote:

Originally Posted by vonnegut

Mo, I you

Spoiler: notes

gift cards make great gifts both for shoppers who are lazy and/or have a lot of gifts to buy. They're also a shrewd choice if there are individuals in your life for whom it is difficult to shop. When bought through the astore, they also help support this site, which isn't self-sufficient and doesn't hold fund-raisers or any of that other crap.

Mrs. Mo had had the same Part D provider for 15 years. Back in March, they raised her premium by $30/month. That would not have been outside our means. However, we have never received a bill from them, EVER, in spite of two correspondences per month explaining the same benefits every month and telling us how great a choice they were for us; and we received no notice of increased premium. So we continued to send in the same premium we always had.

Then comes mid-June. We go to the pharmacy and find out that Mrs. Mo's Part D coverage has been dropped. After about 20 hours on the phone over the course of three days, we finally find out why. To make matters even better, we offer to pay the $120 that we were never told about in the first place, but they say it's too late for that now after cancellation, and she'll need to pick a new plan from somebody else.

So we sold several valuables to cover the $2000 for her scripts for that month. Thanks, SilverScript!

Mo, you should do some research on your rights. If health insurance is even remotely like P&C then they would be statutorily required to provide notice of cancellation and give you the opportunity to remedy the situation. You may want to complain to your state division of insurance.

That would be a great point, if we were dealing with New York State you would be 100% right and we'd get every cent back if we paid the $120.

However, SilverScript is bound by federal rules (because they're exclusiely available through Medicare, which is federal not state-based), aka ACA aka ObamaCare, and they are totally getting away with it. Mrs. Mo is now going to go through NYS for part D, because it's now vastly superior.

We honestly do appreciate the thought and advice. Thank you, Ness.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maturin

I've always appreciated your restraint, Mo

Quote:

Originally Posted by vonnegut

Mo, I you

Spoiler: notes

gift cards make great gifts both for shoppers who are lazy and/or have a lot of gifts to buy. They're also a shrewd choice if there are individuals in your life for whom it is difficult to shop. When bought through the astore, they also help support this site, which isn't self-sufficient and doesn't hold fund-raisers or any of that other crap.

Just kidding. Kind of. I did read last week that up to 1,332 counties across America will only have ONE insurance provider in their area in 2018 - and dozens to hundreds of more will potentially have none. NONE. In 2017 America. They are dropping like flies, and premiums are rising at uncontrollable rates.

We need to allow states to control their own insurance. Government (obviously) cannot handle it.

That's fine for those of us who live in a state like NY, where a Republican legislature wrote and passed, and a Republican Governor (Pataki), signed what was the then the most ground-breaking piece of socialized medical legislation in US history.

Somehow i have an insistent little niggling feeling that people living in MANY other states aren't going to have such options.

ETA: NY Republicans are generally closer to the "left" side of the political spectrum than many Southern Democrats. As they say, "Politics makes for strange bedfellows, but NY politics are jus f***ing weird."

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maturin

I've always appreciated your restraint, Mo

Quote:

Originally Posted by vonnegut

Mo, I you

Spoiler: notes

gift cards make great gifts both for shoppers who are lazy and/or have a lot of gifts to buy. They're also a shrewd choice if there are individuals in your life for whom it is difficult to shop. When bought through the astore, they also help support this site, which isn't self-sufficient and doesn't hold fund-raisers or any of that other crap.

Just kidding. Kind of. I did read last week that up to 1,332 counties across America will only have ONE insurance provider in their area in 2018 - and dozens to hundreds of more will potentially have none. NONE. In 2017 America. They are dropping like flies, and premiums are rising at uncontrollable rates.

We need to allow states to control their own insurance. Government (obviously) cannot handle it.

This post, particularly the last sentence, has really been sitting on my mind. I could not disagree more. Unregulated health insurance would be an unmitigated disaster; we would probably actually decrease in population as a result. Government HAS to regulate them, but they need to actually do so, not pretend they are by letting the insurance and pharmaceutical company lobbyists write the legislation and then signing off on it without even reading it.

__________________

Quote:

Originally Posted by Maturin

I've always appreciated your restraint, Mo

Quote:

Originally Posted by vonnegut

Mo, I you

Spoiler: notes

gift cards make great gifts both for shoppers who are lazy and/or have a lot of gifts to buy. They're also a shrewd choice if there are individuals in your life for whom it is difficult to shop. When bought through the astore, they also help support this site, which isn't self-sufficient and doesn't hold fund-raisers or any of that other crap.

gift cards make great gifts both for shoppers who are lazy and/or have a lot of gifts to buy. They're also a shrewd choice if there are individuals in your life for whom it is difficult to shop. When bought through the astore, they also help support this site, which isn't self-sufficient and doesn't hold fund-raisers or any of that other crap.